i feel calm with you in my hands

i love taking pictures.  

i love seeing the world through an eye that has 

the ability to freeze an image and translate it to the page 

and then keeps working in the silent way 

that time ticks on or hearts swoosh blood up and down a body

a picture lasts and keeps on pulsing 

it forces you to feel or not feel, to form an opinion or to render none

an image has the ability to become four-dimensional, looking at it 

from all sides and knowing what its breath feels like; the metallic scent of exposure 

and sweat.  forcing you to be alert

a smelling salt under nose. and in the aching swoon of our chest, it conjures a memory; 

i remember 
the musky scent of those woods and the way 
that rope felt in my hands 
as i swung over those leaves through the almost-gone humidities 
of summer’s end, 
into my father’s arms.

the inconsequential consequence of a shutter shutting

my proof that i have lived to see this tiny moment in a world 

where trillions of tiny moments twinkle, collide and pass silently, 

shepherded away from any seeing, any capture, and lens to mirror, 

any light refracted.  but i have these, here.  

these i have.  in my hand, appearing.

xokay